Skills That Boost Your Pay By More Than 20 Percent, And How To Sell Them

This year, the Workforce Skills Preparedness Report investigated what skills matter most in the job market. The goal of the study was to find out what it was that hiring managers most wanted to see in new candidates. The study concluded that five skill areas were most desired. These were training in data analysis applications like Go and Cisco, machine learning, M&A, and Scala. Other skills that were lacking, according to managers, were the ability to write, speak in public and analyze data.

What the study revealed was that there were tangible ways that employees with these skills could boost their wages. In all of the above cases, having those particular skills could lead to a 20 percent pay increase. So it appears that it’s worth the time to dedicate oneself to learning more if you’re currently in the computer or math field.

Evaluate Whether You Have These Skills

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You could be lucky. It might turn out that you can already demonstrate you have the skills that employers are looking for. Go through your resume and check whether there’s any experience you can leverage as a means to get a higher pay packet. Ask yourself whether you ever wrote anything deliverable for a client in the past. Find out what types of data analysis you’ve already done and whether there’s demand for it from employers. Look at ways to create a story about your career using hard examples which demonstrate real skills.

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Create New Skills If You Don’t Have Them Already

Having the skills already is all well and good, but few people actually do. But that doesn’t mean that learning new skills is out of your reach. There’s plenty that you can do today to start developing those skills that employers value most highly. One idea is to start churning out written pieces of work as a guest blogger or editor on social media. Another idea is to approach an online platform to learn new technical and entrepreneurial skills. This Team Treehouse review explains some of the options available to those interesting in programming. There’s also scope to improve your public speaking. You could volunteer at your local alma mater, exercise club, or class. Or you could find a lunchtime community to do a workshop on a topic in which you are expert.

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What about if you want to get into analytics? One of the things that experts recommend is that you just start by doing it. Many people fancy a career change and want to get into an analytical field, like finance. Often they’re unsure how to go about this. But expert coaches recommend that they just start by doing it themselves. One idea is to start writing your own recommendations for buying and selling stocks. This will teach you analytical, writing and technical skills involved with financial work. And it’s a great way to quickly build a portfolio that you can then show to employers. Learning by doing is often the best way.

Promote New Skills

Many people learn a bunch of new skills. But because they’re not formal qualifications, they don’t update their resumes. Unfortunately, this can make them appear a lot less attractive on paper than they really are. Make sure you emphasize the things that employers complain are in short supply.